But another
and uncomfortable truth is that the Republican Party is itself worse on the
issue than it was a little over two years ago.
The reason is Donald Trump.
Indeed, as Peter Laffin has
argued, “Trump-Vance is the most anti-life Republican administration in
history.” During the 2024 campaign, Trump
rigged
the GOP party platform process so as to exclude pro-lifers and ram through
a removal of the pro-life plank. He actively
opposed Republican efforts at the state level to restrict abortion. He has actively supported IVF, which
kills more embryos than abortion does.
He has urged
Republicans to be more “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use
of federal funds for abortion. Trump and
Vance promised during the 2024 campaign to preserve access to abortion pills,
and the administration has kept that promise.
Yet abortion pills are
the means for the majority of abortions in the United States today. As Laffin notes:
Trump’s DOJ-enforced and FDA-approved mail-order abortion
regime effectively nullifies the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That’s because,
in practice, it all but guarantees the right to an abortion no matter what
state you live in. Under the current
rules, abortion providers in blue states freely ship their product into red
states. This availability of
mifepristone via “telehealth” providers largely accounts for the climbing total
of abortions nationally since the fall of Roe.
It is true
that opposition to late-term abortion remains in the GOP platform and is still
part of standard GOP rhetoric. But the
significance of this fact should not be overstated. Early-term abortions are no less murderous
than late-term abortions. They are
simply less grisly. And pro-lifers are
in other contexts sensitive to the fact that the grisliness of a practice is
not what is fundamentally at issue when determining whether it counts as murder. For example, they vigorously condemn
euthanasia and assisted suicide as murder, even when they are carried out
painlessly. Hence, if pro-lifers express
outrage when Democrats support late-term abortion, then they should also
express outrage when Republicans like Trump support abortion pills and the
like.
As it
happens, though, too many pro-lifers who are rightly outraged by what Governor
Healey has done have over the last two years either kept silent about Trump’s
betrayals or offered only muted criticism.
This shows how far the tail of partisanship has come to wag the dog of
principle. Pro-lifers have tended to
support the GOP because they believe that that is the party more likely to promote
their goals. But that will be true only
to the extent that pro-lifers make it clear that the GOP will pay a political
price for betraying them. If instead
they remain silent in the face of betrayals, they will ensure that the
Republican Party will move even further away from pursuing any serious pro-life
policies. It is not they who will be
using the GOP for their ends, but the GOP that will be using them for its
ends.
Some
pro-lifers nevertheless rationalize relatively uncritical support for Trump and
the GOP on the grounds that they are the lesser of two evils. In Mere
Christianity, C. S. Lewis noted the dangers of this kind of thinking:
I feel a strong desire to tell you – and I expect you feel a
strong desire to tell me – which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs
– pairs of opposites. And he always
encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one
error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go
straight through between both errors. We
have no other concern than that with either of them. (p. 145)
When we stay silent about a purportedly lesser evil, we end up aiding and abetting that evil rather than merely avoiding the greater evil. The thing to do is to oppose all evils, whether great, small, or in between. That requires putting all political parties and politicians at arm’s length, and vigorously criticizing any and all of them when they promote policies at odds with respect for the lives of the unborn.
So let's say there are no national or state laws forbidding murder. Only local laws of which there's a great variety. A priori, is the an objectively unjust situation? Feser seems to say "yes, the situation is unjust, and the 'state' needs to intervene". But to whence does all this lead? Let's say the "state" allows murder. What is local law to say? Feser is incoherent on this point. Not in a deep philosophical sense, but just he says one thing, means another, and then changes what he says.
ReplyDeleteNo idea what you're talking about.
DeleteProfessor I'm quite confident he doesn't know either
DeleteEvery man has his limitations
DeleteSo let's say there are no national or state laws forbidding murder. Only local laws of which there's a great variety. A priori, is the an objectively unjust situation?
DeleteIn practice, nearly all law regarding violence and harm of individuals are handled at the state level. You are asking us to envision a complete re-writing of criminal law to instead have it done at the local level. Where? Cities? But a city is only a portion of the county of which it is a part. What about the rest of the county? County law? Counties are organs and operatives of the state, designated with its powers by state rules.
Or would you prefer to have each neighborhood make its own criminal law?
Yes, in theory this could be tried, and could be considered as a way of carrying out the necessary rule of law for a society. But it would be so ridiculous a patchwork as to be an unworkable mess, i.e. not prudent. Imagine the result of each town, city, and county having its own rules for car pollution limits: in effect you could not drive anywhere without meeting the standard for the MOST stringent rule. And so on. A "society" that is large must have some similarity of law that applies across the society to function. Because of our history, we function that way with most criminal law being at the state level.
As the popes have made clear (but was articulated also by secular statesmen as well), a society needs to not only have laws that defend people from specific harm, they also need laws that spell out basic human rights. The right to life is one of those. Notionally a society that had no positive law forbidding murder could be considered, but it would be a defective one for failing to spell out that basic human right. In addition, it would tend toward grave injustices in fact through this negligence. So it would be a damaged community by that very condition.
With "Let's say the "state" allows murder. What is local law to say?", you seem to be imagining that local law is beholden to the state, rather than to principles of justice, natural law, or divine command.
DeleteSo long as we reject that premise, the answer seems obvious: local laws should protect against gross injustices that aren't already handled by the state.
I have no idea how this would contradict anything in Feser's original post—meaning that I have no idea how he's been incoherent.
Women celebrating the right to murder their own children.
ReplyDeleteI cannot even bring myself to pray for these kinds of people. They're disgusting. Their smile and performative gestures sicken me. Even eternal fire is too kind a fate for scum like this.
You could always pray they change their minds.
DeleteMost of these women will likely make it to heaven, if there is one, while you performative Christian hypocrites will face the wrath you all so desperately desire for others.
DeleteAh, so Anonymous #2 believes, at least, that some people face damnation. I believe this is what they call "a handsome" admission.
DeleteDays latter, i'am sure you can see things diferently. Even the Psalms have the registration of rage in they(like that famous one about the rocks), so this comment is understandable, but one must pray for all. It is suprisingly good, tends to help me see the value in these than i disagree with.
DeletePersonally, i sometimes wonder if i should worry, for it is very hard to media to affect me(entre os americanos ou mesmo o que acontece aqui no nosso país, embora os desastres frequentes entristeçam) but who knows.
No matter what we few, that we do our duty for all, my friend, that we do our duty for all.
I am aware of Trump's breaking of his promises on the Epstein files, and the Iran war, but only now have I been made aware of his breaking of his promises on the pro-life issue.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I'm no longer a Trump supporter due to the war and Epstein files issues.
Congratulations on finally getting some clue as to how bad the dude is.
DeleteVery well Written , Prof. I completely agree. Mm
ReplyDeleteNot even Aristophanes could have predicted it that far, and he was quite the longshot when it came to decadence in politics...
ReplyDelete"Early-term abortions are no less murderous than late-term abortions"
ReplyDeleteProve that "ensouled" moral personhood begins at conception. Prove it without recourse to "Da Big Pope Man With Da Fancy Hat Says So", or else concede that your position is purely a religious one with no rational basis.
Additionally, a question: if abortion is murder from conception, why did the Church disagree with that idea for nearly 14 centuries? Up until 1869's Apostolicae Sedis, that was not the position of the Catholic Church! For the vast majority of Christian history, the Church followed Augustine of Hippo's opinion that life truly began at "the Quickening", or when the mother can feel the baby move for the first time. Prior to that, abortion was considered contraception, but not killing. So, for 1400 years or so, hundreds of thousands of faithful Catholics murdered their babies and believed in good conscience that they weren't committing anything anywhere near as serious as murder. I guess God just didn't think that was an important thing to know?
Derrr I’m Catholic, I guess I’d have to say it’s because peepol thot babies formed diffwently in da womb in da forteenf century. And dumb old me seems to think you acknowledge that point in your very description of “quickening”. But what do I know… except that thing I just said… I know that.
Delete"Ensoulment" is not some kooky metaphysical concept that can resolved by papal fiat, despite the way the Catholic Church has pointlessly muddled the question. The soul is the life, form, and rational principle of the body. This is the standard Aristotelean view, which Catholics have modified to make room for their doctrine of the special divine creation of the human soul, which is basically just a clumsy attempt to distinguish human beings from animals. Set that aside, and there's no difficulty. The idea that ensoulment begins at quickening was simply bad science, no different than the belief in the humours or phlogiston. The Church also believed that women were inferior and that slavery was allowed for about 1800 years. Most Christians have no trouble putting the blame for that on the institutional church rather than God.
DeleteAnon,
DeleteOK, so we didn't know. Sure - and apparently your all-knowing, all-loving God didn't see this as an issue at all? He's super-duper against killing babies in all its forms, but He also thought there was no need to inform you that the actions you thought were innocent actually involved killing babies? Do you see the contradiction here?
Thur,
DeleteI see. I was under the misapprehension that you were Catholic. But even so, you still end up having to deal with the fact that God apparently allowed Christians to ignorantly engage in infanticide by permitting an incorrect understanding of biology to win out for some 14 centuries. And while I'm glad that you acknowledge that the Church was wrong to teach women's subjugation and the moral defensibility of slavery, you still have to face the question of why God would permit such a disastrous state of affairs, and for it to be done by people trying to follow His own name? Is this not gross, criminal neglect? If my children killed someone because I hadn't bothered to tell them that playing with knives can kill people, I would be held responsible and considered a detestably wicked human being. Why does God get a pass, especially when He's supposed to be infinitely *better* than us?
EXE,
Delete"But even so, you still end up having to deal with the fact that God apparently allowed Christians to ignorantly engage in infanticide by permitting an incorrect understanding of biology to win out for some 14 centuries."
You seem to be under the impression that Christians were once permitted to voluntarily terminate a pregnancy. But this is mistaken. Even on the outdated theory of ensoulment occurring long after contraception, it was still viewed as wrong, for the same reasons why contraception is viewed as wrong. It's deliberately frustrating the activity of the reproductive faculty. So no, God wasn't "allowing Christians to ignorantly engage in infanticide."
the fact that God apparently allowed Christians to ignorantly engage in infanticide by permitting an incorrect understanding of biology to win out for some 14 centuries.
DeleteExcept that your ignorance shows of historical fact: the Church regarded abortion as immoral even during the period most theologians thought that ensoulment happened at quickening. It was forbidden in the Didache, circa 150 AD.
No, I am not ignorant of the Didache's existence, nor am I ignorant of the fact that the Church still condemned pre-Quickening abortions as contraceptive. But none of that actually changes my point. It was that you did not view the procedure as *murder* at the time. Even in your own schema, contraception is less serious than murder. My point is that God was apparently fine with letting people who engaged in infanticide believe that they were only engaging in contraception instead. Again, apparently he thought it was fine to leave you in the dark on that front.
DeleteAnd furthermore, trying to rely on the Didache for your position is problematic. The book's a manual used in some regions of early Christianity as a guide to orthopraxy. Well and good, but there's a couple of issues: firstly, it still distinguishes abortion from infanticide, saying that "you shall not murder a child in destruction (en phthora) *nor* shall you kill infants." Sure, it might have thought abortion was bad, but it still seems to have regarded it as not-infanticide. Secondly, it's a bit hypocritical to cherry-pick from the Didache's instructions, accepting its position on abortion while rejecting its positions on other topics. For instance, it also commands non-retaliation in the face of assault (echoing the sermon on the mount), requires you to give to anyone who asks without asking for anything back, and specifies fasting twice a week. Do you do all these? If not, why do you think you can strip one command out from the others and hold it up as authoritative?
Any time I see a demand for proof, I strongly suspect I'm not dealing with a serious argument.
DeletePersonally, I'm more inclined to want proof that something isn't murder before doing it. People that say "Prove to me that firing this gun won't kill an innocent person; only then will I stop pulling the trigger." strike me as, to put it gently, irresponsible.
"Any time I see a demand for proof, I strongly suspect I'm not dealing with a serious argument."
DeleteAnd this is how we know you're dogsh&t stupid. Asking for proof of an assertion is "unserious"? What, then, do serious thinkers do? Simply accept the traditions that have come down to them uncritically? No wonder science wilted under you people.
Oh, and while we're talking about abortion, how about this little ditty:
ReplyDeleteExodus 21:22-25 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)
22 “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. 23 If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Notice that Exodus regards the causing of death to an unborn child as merely property damage requiring a fine, NOT as the murder of a full legal and moral person, which would activate Talionic Justice and require life for life. But harm to the woman, as noted by verses 23-25, WOULD activate Talionic Justice and requires like punishment.
John
DeleteThere's a lot of dispute on the word "miscarriage." I'm pretty sure the Hebrew just refers to premature birth, and the later stipulation (eye for eye, life for life) could then be seen as applying to the baby as well as the mother.
DeleteFirst.. It is absolutely irrelevant what Exodus says Unless You assume that one must get ones's morality from a literal reading of the Old Testament. Even many who think the Bible inspired would reject this. I certainly would.. and A long discussion could be had in what way the Bible helps define moral principles and it would take us far afield but for sure not in this simplistic absurd way of cherry picking ancient texts and saying there see "gotcha".. If you do that you will be rather embarrassed by those more lurid texts that God suggests the Isreli's massacre everyone who falls under the ban.. and so forth. You need to interpret Biblical morality in the context of the entire text's understanding of God over time and in particular the New Testament. It is obvious that the Early Christians condemned Abortion as murder as noted in the first century Didache.
DeleteBut leaving all this aside since you appear to be the individual who wants to do the killing it is incumbent on you to create a morally defensible line that says yes you can not kill and dismember an infant ( presumably you agree.. ) but you can kill and dismember an unborn child at this stage of development but not 24 hours after this stage. If you look at an embryology text book it is very difficult, I would say impossible to find a morally significant difference between an unborn child at say 22 weeks and one at say 16 weeks or one at 16 weeks and one at 6 weeks.. I did not say a difference.. because of course there are differences.. I said a morally significant one that can be justified based on your arbitrary assertions.. Regardless even if one selected some arbitrary post conception time point at which you find the killing of unborn children objectionable you would find Trump wanting.. Trump attacked the pro life laws protecting Unborn children with a heart beat.. as "too extreme". In fact I can not think of a single pro life law Trump has promoted or proposed or defended. Indeed any Republican President would have appointed the Judges that overturned Roe. Bush appointed Justice Alito after all who authored Dobbs. If you are prolife this is adequate evidence that tells you Trump is not.. It is true he is not going after Pro Life groups in the same way a Democrat or Biden would so that might mean you can make the case that in a vote you can pick the one who does the less harm but the full throat-ed support that the Republicans in general, some conservatives and the Pro Life community have given him has been a mistake as he has burned much of all three to the grown. This is the central point of Professors Feser's piece and for which I think he provides ample evidence.
"There's a lot of dispute on the word "miscarriage." I'm pretty sure the Hebrew just refers to premature birth, and the later stipulation (eye for eye, life for life) could then be seen as applying to the baby as well as the mother."
DeleteWell then, you'd be at odds with the consensus of professional Biblical scholars, who agree that this is a very weak and unlikely reading of the text, and that miscarriage makes far more sense. But I won't stop there; I'll show you the reasons they give for why this is the case.
1. The Hebrew verb used here is "yatsa (יָצָא)", literally "go out, bring forth". This verb is used to refer to normal births, but also to stillbirths, miscarriages, and so on (you can find examples of it being used in all three ways within the pages of the Bible). The word itself is not determinative; you need to look at the context in which it's used in order to figure out which meaning is in play. If, say, the sentence is "she went into labor, her child "came out", and she was happy", it's obviously talking about a normal birth. If instead it's something like "she wanted to be a mother, but the child "came out" and she wept", it's obviously referring to a miscarriage. Since the context for Exodus 21 is very obviously not a normal birth (it's about a premature birth being induced via violent injury to the woman), your mind would naturally go towards thinking about miscarriage - because that's obviously something you would fear happening in such a situation, in fact it's probably the very first thought that would come to your mind if you heard about a pregnant woman being assaulted. Given that fact, we should conclude that it's being used in the "miscarriage" sense, as that's far more natural. If the authors wanted to specify a scenario where a premature birth is induced but the child is otherwise healthy and unharmed, they could have said so, but they would surely have used much more explicit language to make this clear. You don't write your laws in such a way that your intended meaning is actually the one that requires a far *less* natural and far *more* awkward reading of the text.
2. The basic fact that it would not make any sense (at least within the legal mindset of the Hebrew Bible) to impose a fine for an action that did *not* result in any material loss. To induce a premature birth that does not result in further harm to the infant is not a fineable offense according to the logic of the legislation of the Hebrew Bible - that would be entirely unique, an idea found nowhere else.
3. This is actually the strongest reason - namely, that the Covenant Code is not original. It cribs heavily from the Code of Hammurabi, which predated it by centuries (which is true even if you take a very conservative dating of the Hebrew Bible). It takes many of these laws, sometimes even in the same ordering that they're listed in Hammurabi's Code. Here's the laws that are being sourced in this passage:
Law 209. If a man strike a man's daughter and bring about a miscarriage, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for her miscarriage.
Law 210. If that woman die, they shall put his daughter to death.
Unlike in the Hebrew, the Akkadian is NOT ambiguous. It absolutely, definitely does refer to miscarriage, and not premature birth. There are also other laws in the region around the same time period, it was a standardised piece of legislation that was passed all around Ancient Southwest Asia. The Neo-Assyrian Laws, the Hittite Laws, etc all cover the same situation, and in each and every case those laws are always talking about two outcomes: miscarriage with no serious harm to the woman, and serious harm to the woman. In not even a single law code is it referring to some third outcome where a baby is born prematurely and otherwise unharmed, that is never even thought of. If you want to argue that Exodus is changing those laws, that's possible, but is something that needs to be seriously supported by argumentation - we need a good reason why we should assume that something totally different is meant.
(Addendum because the comment was too long):
Delete4. And finally, as a cherry on top, the first person to ever seriously suggest that this passage be interpreted as supporting fetal personhood (to my knowledge) was John Calvin, whose argument for doing so amounted to "well, obviously it must mean that, because...well, *I* believe that abortion is murder, so obviously the Bible must also think so, and if the Bible says otherwise, clearly my interpretation must win out." In other words, he simply asserts his own beliefs about the text onto it, rather than actually letting it speak for itself.
mdepie,
DeleteBefore we get into this, I'd just like to start by saying that you seem like a nice person. I often adopt a combative, mean, even snide personality around these parts because I have to deal with a lot of dogmatic blockheads dedicated to ignoring my points and just beating their chests at me. I won't do that with you - I'll try to be as straightforward with you as I can be. Now, the actual substance of your comment:
Well, I'm glad that you don't get your morality from the Old Testament, but my question is how you, as a Christian (I assume), can validly do such a thing. Is not the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament the very word of God? Are these not the Laws given by God to His people, to govern their behavior and make them holy and moral? The Laws which Jesus explicitly stated that He was not changing, and that it would be easier for the Earth and Heaven to be destroyed than for them to be altered even slightly? How does that make sense?
I agree that my use of various quotes from assorted books would be cherry-picking, IF the books were simply an ordinary collection of texts. Books can have different authors, viewpoints, moralities, they can contradict each other and that's usually fine. The problem comes only for people who believe that these Books represent a unified view or position. IF the Bible is supposed to be One Big Story, the expression of God's Message to Humanity, then those conflicting ideas suddenly become a problem. As a fictional example, if Book A says that it's never OK to enslave people, ever, and Book B says that enslaving people is totally fine, they contradict each other, but that's not a problem - they're just different stories. But if you tell me that *both books are 100% true*, NOW we have a problem, because that doesn't make sense. This is why contradictions in the Bible matter - because their existence means that the Bible cannot be what Christianity says it is, the infallible and inspired Word of God. Technically, you could solve this problem by simply cutting the offending books out of the Bible and declaring that only some of them are *really* inspired, but very few people are willing to do that these days, and I doubt that idea appeals to you either.
Unfortunately, I don't think talking about context actually solves any problems here. For context to matter, you need to show how putting the words back into their original context changes anything. Exodus 21 is part of the Covenant Code - a series of laws which the narrative says were given to Moses for Israel. That's the context - that they're normative laws given by God which should be followed, end of story. There's no indication that they're intended to be temporary or imperfect or anything other than what they seem to be at first glance.
"You need to interpret Biblical morality in the context of the entire text's understanding of God over time and in particular the New Testament"
Actually, this is one thing I want to push back on, and heavily. This is the Presupposition of Univocality, though you might not have ever heard that precise term. Basically, this is the idea that I described above - that the Bible is one great big unified story that must be interpreted "as a whole" rather than book by book. But the big problem is that this is a completely uncritical way to look at Scripture. There is literally no reason to think this is true unless you already come to the table believing that, usually because you were told that it was true while young and have just gotten used to the idea. It cannot be rationally defended - it's a dogma. Certainly nothing in the Bible would lead you to that conclusion on its own. To engage with the Bible honestly is to engage with it on its own terms - to allow the books to speak for themselves instead of telling them what they are and aren't allowed to say or mean. An honest person should try to follow the truth wherever it leads, even if that leads to uncomfortable places.
(Comment will be split in 2 to fit under the character limit)
(mdepie 2/2)
Delete"It is obvious that the Early Christians condemned Abortion as murder as noted in the first century Didache."
Well, the issue you have there is manyfold. Firstly, the Didache isn't and never has been accepted as Scripture, so simply pointing to it and saying that decides it is problematic. It is just an essay that was held in high regard by some Early Christians within their community. Apologists often say misleading things like "this shows what The Early Church thought", as if there were any such thing as a singular "Early Church". The Early Church absolutely did not have their collective sh*t together, and had nothing even resembling a unified structure, even loosely. There were vastly different communities separated by great distances, with different traditions, practices, Gospels, and such. These Gospels often have very different theologies, sometimes contradictory. For example, the Gospel According To The Hebrews (note, I'm not referring to the Book in your Bible called "Hebrews", that's the Epistle to the Hebrews) was a work held in very high regard by many prominent early church fathers, who quoted it extensively as a prooftext for their arguments about the interpretation of Scripture...and in fact it only survives in these quotes. Otherwise, the text is completely lost. What we do know about it is that it included some theological concepts that would sound very weird to a modern Christian. Among others, it has Jesus referring to the Holy Spirit as His "Divine Mother", claims that the Virgin Mary was actually the Archangel Michael, that James, brother of Jesus, was the first to see the Resurrected Christ after having fasted for some time. The Holy Spirit picks Jesus up by a single hair and flies him to Mount Tabor.
Later, when one specific group won the theological war and secured the support of the Roman State, they re-wrote this history to claim that they had always been the One True Real Church and that every other group were Evil Heretics who broke off from them because they were Evil. In reality, these condemned "heretics" were just as old as the "Orthodox" Church and were their equals at first. They just lost the war, and so got painted as the villains of the story.
Finally, you've got the issue that the Church...didn't ultimately follow its recommendation. From Augustine until 1869, the Church went with the Aristotelian position, which said that abortion prior to the time the baby first kicks was only contraception, but not murder. So clearly the Church didn't actually accept it?
Finally...I don't "like" abortion. No reasonable person does. Those who defend abortion do so for good reasons, even if you don't view those as justification. Reasons like not wanting to bring kids into the world that will have miserable lives, or that women are not ready to support, or who would certainly pose a serious risk to the mother's health, or not wanting women to be chained to abusive men. I've heard all the counter-responses to these, so I likely know what you'd say to those reasons. But know at least that it is done out of a genuine desire to produce good outcomes - happy families that actually want to be together and can afford to live good lives, rather than dysfunctional, broken nightmares that generate generations of traumatized, suffering people.
Hey EXE, please leave forever.
DeleteA school full of children being bombed deserves a fierce railing against the evils of American imperialism. Even an abstract child dying with cancer gets a passionate rant against an absent or evil God. Over 800000 children dead in a year in the United States alone only deserves a "Prove that "ensouled" moral personhood begins at conception.". If it cannot be proved to EXE's exacting standards that "moral personhood" begins at conception (when else would it begin?) then they can have their skulls crushed. In this moral world even dogs get put down more humanely. In this moral world, tragedy is tragic only if it can be weaponized for political goals. But remember that EXE is a "reasonable" person. He doesn't "like" abortion. All 800000 of them in year in the United States alone. Unlike "some of us", he is not fine with "mass murder". He wants "happy families". He says so, so what more proof would one want?
DeleteTerilien:
DeleteTough sh*t. I'll leave when I want to, and not before. What's the matter, do my words hurt your feelings so?
grodrigues:
Make sure you don't pop a blood vessel there, Roddy. Nobody (except extreme racists, maybe) would deny that nine-year-old Iranian schoolgirls are full moral people. This is less than obviously true in the case of a day-old zygote. *You* believe, because of your religion, that this is obviously true, but if you want other people to accept that, you're gonna have to show it. Unless you show it, saying "8 million kids are murdered by abortion every year!" is begging the question. Literally everything else in your post is just ad hominem and character assassination, more aimed at stirring up a froth of fanatical zealotry and religious dogmatism than proving anything. I get it, I inspire an overwhelming sense of rage, hatred, and disgust in your heart. I don't care. Make an actual argument or shut your mouth. Oh, who am I kidding? You never have and you never will. You're just here to scream, preach, and beat your chest like a gorilla. Have fun with that.
@EXE Unfortunately there's no way my response to you would pass through Ed's moderation.
DeleteSetting aside the mentioned translation issues, it seems fairly obvious that there are a number of ways to take this passage:
DeleteCausing a miscarriage in a fight could reasonably be seen as something more akin to involuntary manslaughter than first degree murder.
It could reasonably be believed that a lack of awareness at the time of fetal development could be a factor that is not available to us in the present.
The Mosaic law was never seen as a complete or final law, dictating all moral and legal positions for all time (Matthew 19:8 comes to mind).
And several others, I'm sure. In general, the idea that a literal reading of an individual verse should be binding for all Christians seems less a rational argument than an attempt to shut down opposition. Better to attempt to make a case in favor of abortion rights (namely, that the most reasonable definition of "human life" would exclude the unborn) than to insist that a minority reading of one verse is the only valid reading.
"Setting aside the mentioned translation issues"
DeleteWell, first of all, you cannot simply "set them aside". You cannot just ignore crucial information - that's incredibly dishonest. Most scholars agree that it refers to "miscarriage". You have to take that into account when trying to explain the passage. Otherwise you are simply shutting your eyes and pretending not to see the problem.
"Causing a miscarriage in a fight could reasonably be seen as..."
Debilis, nobody cares what YOU think about the actions in question. What we're discussing is what THE BIBLE thinks the character of the action to be. What does *Exodus 21* think causing a miscarriage in a fight deserves? You say "you think it could be compared to manslaughter", but that reading directly contradicts the actual words of the text. There is no way that manslaughter would be punished merely with a fine - as seen by the fact that "other harm" (to the woman) is explicitly stated to require life for life, tooth for tooth, stripe for stripe - even though it is also accidental! Your interpretation requires you to completely ignore the words in front of you, as well as every other time the Hebrew Bible talks about manslaughter!
"The Mosaic law was never seen as a complete or final law"
This is a Christian dogma, not something you can actually read in the text. The Jews certainly don't seem to agree with you. You only believe this because you have been taught to, not because you have any good reason to believe it.
Also, do you believe that the Bible is the inspired word of an omniscient and all-good God, or simply books written down by men without divine inspiration? Because if you believe the former, then you cannot appeal to "lack of awareness of science/fetal development" without concluding that God deliberately chose not to communicate this fact to His chosen people. God, presumably, always knew that a fetus was a person from the first instant of its conception, and yet chose to allow Jews and Christians to labor in ignorance of this vital fact for thousands of years. How is this possible?
You seem to be under the odd impression that the Catholic Church has taught that the conceived zygote is a human person as part of divine revelation, and that Catholics wouldn't have any reason to credit the idea other than because the Church says it's revealed truth. The reality is nearly the opposite.
DeleteFirst, the Church said abortion was immoral ages before any idea of a zygote, i.e. from the 2nd century AD at least. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that she taught it was immoral because of the person who would eventually come to be from the base material in the womb.
It was principally during the late 19th century that the Church started to give formal recognition of newer biology indicating that the early fetus was much more determinately a developing human being simply speaking, rather than a future human being, and did this in response to biological evidence, not revelation. It wasn't until JPII in the late 20th century that there were strong doctrinal assertions about the zygote being a human person: IIRC, even he was fairly cautious about definitive statements for more than 10 years of his papacy, being cagey and slightly reserved from saying flat out "the conceptus IS a human person from the moment of conception".
The allocation of the concept "human PERSON" to the biologically verified fact of a human living being that is a zygote is not, specifically, a biological determination. It would be difficult for that to be a purely biological finding, since scientists have just as much trouble DEFINING the concept "person" as they have defining "consciousness". So, the fact that there is philosophical dispute as to whether the thing that all of science recognizes to be a human being is also a human person is not surprising. The Church has weighted in on the issue, but as far as I know her weight has been levied in support in the same manner as other cases where she teaches truths of reason that are necessarily true from the way they touch on revealed dogmas, not as if it is, itself, a revealed truth. Even when she recognizes a truth of reason as being related to revealed truth, she doesn't claim that these truths are ONLY accepted because revelation requires it: usually, there are good and strong reasons wholly independent of revelation to say those truths are to be held, e.g. the principles of logic, the existence of material things, the preambles of faith, etc. There are good purely philosophical reasons to hold that every distinct being that is a human being is also a human person. Science tells us the zygote is a human being, good philosophy tells us that the human being is a human person, and the Church confirms that this combination of truths sits in happy conformity to revealed truth. She nowhere even remotely suggests, much less teaches, that the only reason to hold the zygote is a person is because of revelation.
You may hold a disputatious notion for the concept "person" that is incompatible with what I or other Catholics hold. But please give up the erroneous notion that it is revelation alone that drives that divergence.
Not agreeing with EXE view, but it seems like this Exodus passage does tend to be interpreted as defended here. At least in judaism abortion usually is viewed as not a big deal precisely by the rabbis interpretation of this verse.
Delete(I argue by what i saw from jews and a few pages of the Babylonian Talmud, notoriously hard to read, so who knows)
Just like it seems like the consensus in Christianity than Mosaic Law does not bind no one. Even to the jews it only aply to they l.
(Does it adress EXE argument, not completely, but it is a weird position to argue than christians need to follow this law, and one likely to make him lose christians reading)
while true .. childish.
ReplyDelete1 because one takes to heart what people define as lesser evil when their minds is both incompetent and imprecise
2 because there are people who DO consider it the greater good , not the lesser evil
And yet, the Bible itself nowhere condemn abortion as murder, at any point. At most it condemns it as a property loss of the father, subjecting the perpetrator to a monetary fine, not the death penalty, as was the punishment for murder.
ReplyDeleteThe movement Christianity took, of progressively taking Greek philosophical schools' speculations as overriding and delimiting what Biblical verses can and cannot say and mean, is very transparent on the issue of ensoulment. It started the process of overriding by sharing, with the Pharisees, acceptance of the Aristotelian speculation that ensoulment happens at the quickening. Then, several centuries later, as the overriding progressed into full on Aristotelianism, on this particular topic it adopted the Pythagorean-Stoic speculation that ensoulment happens at conception.
Meanwhile, the position of the one school of Greek philosophy that agreed with the Old Testament on this, Neoplatonism, was ignored.
And thus abortion moved from what it was, a civil misdemeanor subject to a fine *if* the father wanted to press the matter on it, into what it never was, murder.
If Catholics really believed personhood really began at conception, there would be a vast outcry at the huge number of fertilized zygotes that fail to implant in the uterus and are flushed down the toilet. It would be the biggest public health crisis imaginable.
DeleteA good point. From what I've heard, by the 1st century CE, the Greek philosophical views on ensoulment had more or less boiled down to three views:
Delete1.Ensoulment at conception. This was held by the Pythagoreans and the Epicureans.
2. Ensoulment at the Quickening, developing an animal soul into a rational soul. This was the Aristotelian position.
3. Ensoulment at birth, upon contact with the open air. This was the Stoic position, at least according to the sources that I'm reading.
The Hebrew Bible's conception of life actually seems to accord best with the Stoic position, in my view - in those books, the soul is consistently described in terms of breath or wind, to the point where "breath" is a synonym for the soul itself, and may even have been believed to literally, materially be the soul.
In Christianity, it seems like the early Christians were unsure which position was true, but tended towards Ensoulment at Conception, though this would have been problematic because the Pythagoreans and Epicureans believed in conception-ensoulment for reasons that were doctrinally unacceptable for most Christians (the Pythagoreans because they believed in reincarnation, thus the pre-existing soul transmigrates into the fetus upon conception, the Epicureans because they were materialists who believed that the soul was simply made of a special, unique type of matter, coming into existence with the body and perishing forever alongside it). That lasted until Augustine of Hippo decided to endorse the Aristotelian position, and his overwhelming fame and influence throughout the Church made that the settled position of the Church for over a thousand years.
You may want to push your thinking further to include Aristotle's distinction between what we might call nutritive, sensitive and rational soul functions. There is also the question, what Aristotle means when he talks about rational soul as coming in "from the door," literally.
DeleteYou may also want to work in the notion of "person." Is a zygote or embryo a "person"? If not, it doesn't have rights that persons have. If it is a person, that position has to be defended. If calls for blanket bans on abortion are justified by arguments that use premises about a spiritual [immortal] soul, it becomes tricky to base legislation in a non-theocratic state on such arguments.
I will never get tired of this stupid argument. Yep, some Christian and Jewish views on abortion were shaped by the incorrect biological science of the ancient world. They were also wrong about the age of the earth, whether species could change over time, how many teeth women had, and basically everything other particular about biology, physics, and chemistry. But ensoulment, even taken from an Aristotelean perspective, is a purely empirical scientifc question, and it was definitely settled in the 19th-century in favor of the Pythagoreans. To suggest that maybe the modern Church got it wrong puts you in the same intellectual camp as young earth creationists, flat earthers, and believers in spiritualism. To put it another way: You sound like a lunatic.
DeleteAristotle thought that rational soul was present from the beginning but potentially, not actually. Like how a baby has the potential to speak French but cannot actually speak French.
DeleteAs far as zygotes not implanting I wonder what that is supposed to prove. That God allows death? But we know that.
Here's a question:
Since most failures to implant are due to defects in the zygote/embryo then was it a successful conception in the first place?
a.morphous
DeleteGiven that some of them seem perfectly fine with mass murder so long as God's the one doing it, I don't think this would bother them, somehow. "It's God's Will, therefore it must be justified somehow even if we have absolutely no idea how that could possibly make any sense" is my guess.
Thur:
DeleteYou're downplaying it. No, not "some". *All* Jewish and especially Christian views were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, because it was really the only game in town intellectually at that time. And no, it wasn't "the incorrect biological science" of the ancient world, it was the *philosophical beliefs* of the Greeks that were adopted. It's not just a matter of incomplete information, it's about the actual moral underpinnings of your beliefs.
"But ensoulment, even taken from an Aristotelean perspective, is a purely empirical scientific question, and it was definitely settled in the 19th-century in favor of the Pythagoreans."
I have to admit, this made my jaw drop. Really? Ensoulment is a solved empirical question? In that case, you can point me to the experiment that detected the existence of souls, and also identified the point at which the soul enters the child's body, yes? I *assume* you're talking about something more like "we now know there is the DNA of a full human present from conception" or something, but that is absolutely not the same thing as them "having a soul", unless you are using a very idiosyncratic definition of "soul".
Fundamentally, this isn't a question that science can resolve by itself, because this question is a judgment call about what traits an entity needs to have before we should consider it to be worthy of moral concern. It's a debate about what makes a human a "person". You appeal to souls to solve this problem, which doesn't help you much since you haven't been able to actually detect souls at all. I'm sure you have some Thomist response about "form of the body, not some kind of ghost" or something, but at that point you've left the realm of science and ducked back into theology, leaving me asking why I should accept hylomorphic dualism.
Not "allows death". *Causes* death. God is the cause of everything, right? God *kills* those children. And even if it were mere "allowance", that doesn't save you. If I saw a baby crawling towards a sheer drop, and could reasonably stop them from falling off, but chose not to do so, everyone would surely call me morally responsible for the baby's death. And that criticism would be even more furious if saving the baby was not just possible but trivially easy for me to do, such as by pushing a single button. Now, given that God is omnipotent, preventing the deaths of every baby in the world, and every baby that ever will exist, would be infinitely easier for Him than pushing a single button would be for me. Yet He doesn't do that. How is this NOT a grotesquely immoral abdication of responsibility? Every time a question like this comes up, it inevitably ends up seeming that those who view God as the perfect source of morality always end up holding their God to a far *lower* moral bar than they hold even human children to, much less mature adults.
Delete"But ensoulment, even taken from an Aristotelean perspective, is a purely empirical scientifc question, and it was definitely settled in the 19th-century in favor of the Pythagoreans. "
DeleteNow that is funny. Science proves nothing about the soul, which is unobservable. Even Catholic doctrine hasn't settled this apparently:
he Church has never doctrinally settled when ensoulment occurs — and twinning is one of the main reasons it stays quiet.
The official position, from Donum Vitae (1987) and reaffirmed in Dignitas Personae (2008), is carefully hedged: the Magisterium states that the embryo must be treated as a person from conception, while explicitly declining to make a philosophical commitment about the moment the spiritual soul is infused. Donum Vitae says the Church "has not expressly committed itself to an affirmation of a philosophical nature" on ensoulment timing. The moral claim (absolute protection from fertilization) is doctrine; the metaphysical claim (soul present at fertilization) is not.
This is a considered ambiguity, not an oversight. Twinning is the standard difficulty raised in the internal Catholic debate: if a rational soul is individual and indivisible, and the zygote splits into two people around day 5–14, then either one soul became two (impossible on Thomist terms), or a second soul was created and the first person's identity is murky, or the soul wasn't there yet.
Uh, I made a mistake. I made the comment above about God "causing" death. I intended to put bmiller's name in the top of the comment to make it clear that it was a response, but I seem to have made a mistake an accidentally placed that information in the "Comment As" box, so it showed up as if bmiller had written it. That's not him above, that's me.
Deletea.morphous,
Delete19th century science found that sperm and egg combine to create unique human organisms at conception. So if humans have souls it follows that it happens then. Later science confirmed this. You're welcome to think that humans are souless, but that is not the view of Catholics.
The question of twinning is a red herring wrt the abortion debate. First, no woman knows if she is pregnant within 5-14 days and second even if she did and aborted the question would be whether she killed 1 or 2 humans. Certainly one but perhaps two.
but I seem to have made a mistake an accidentally placed that information in the "Comment As" box, so it showed up as if bmiller had written it. That's not him above, that's me.
DeleteThank you for clearing it up, that makes much more sense.
Not "allows death". *Causes* death. God is the cause of everything, right? God *kills* those children. And even if it were mere "allowance", that doesn't save you.
You're right here: God does indeed cause the deaths of children, and of those older, too. The Bible is explicit: ""I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand." (Deut. 32:39)
The correct understanding, of course, is that "morality" in relation to God is not the same as in relation to man, because God is transcendent over all creation. To be more specific (so as not to just claim an exception because "God, that's why"): God created a natural order that has a hierarchy of goods, and that natural order entails living things live until old age, then die of natural causes (i.e. causes he designed), and then they undergo decomposition: the deaths and decay are by design. The decomposition just is some things (e.g. bacteria, molds, vultures, etc) living off the dead body. But also, some living things feed off of other living things, thus there are predators and prey, and the prey die in the course of "nature" feeding predators. This is by His design. From which we learn that death by natural causes, as such, is not a moral wrong. Neither is it a moral wrong when humans die from natural causes. For EVERY SINGLE such human death, (not just babies in utero) God could have superseded natural causes and made that death not happen, but this would have the result that by and large, the natural order isn't functional with respect to humans, and that would undermine it being "the natural order". His plan of the totality of good for which the whole order is designed would be undermined.
St. Thomas clarifies that He intends - for creation - primarily the whole good that encompasses all of nature and all the beings in it, not just the good of specific individuals therein. Considering that whole order's good, the death of an individual by natural causes is only bad-in-a-sense (i.e. "bad" for the individual compared to a good he might have had), not morally wrong. In fact, for each human who wills to cooperate with God, God's plan for his death is that the manner of this death can actually serve FOR his spiritual good, making his eternal life even better, so that what is bad-in-a-sense is meant for his good. (As is medicine that tastes bad, and that has unfortunate side effects, is bad-in-a-sense but meant for health. As is other suffering, death is only one instance of such suffering.) So there is nothing disturbing in God intending deaths that serve the overall good that is the whole good in His plan, he is the one who designed beings who are subject to death for the goods of that plan.
In making an order that includes intelligent beings with free will, one of the goods of the whole order is justice, which entails that good choices be rewarded and evil choices be punished. He carries out this, too, in fulfillment of the order.
I find this a strange line of reasoning, not least because it is typically given by non-Christians and takes as a premise "one is not allowed to morally oppose anything which is not explicitly opposed in Christian scripture" (a premise that no Christian I know would accept).
DeleteThat is to say that it sounds like a strange combination the strawman and tu quoque fallacies (if Christians read scripture I don't accept in a different way, they'd also support killing the unborn. Therefore, it is acceptable to kill the unborn.
If it could be shown that the unborn are not actually persons in the relevant sense, it would be moot to even bring this up. But I suspect that is precisely the inability to show this that is the reason to make such strange arguments.
Tony,
DeleteThank you for not trying the tack that many Christians take, of trying to deny that God does evil. Many do. But despite your honesty, I still don't think you can save your position.
Firstly, and most obviously, I don't see any reason to accept your assertions about the existence of a Natural Hierarchy of Goods, or an afterlife in which wrongs will be made right. But let's set that aside for a moment and just go with it for the sake of argument.
Even if I accept these premises, though, as far as I can see it, your argument seems to rest on the claim that "the suffering and evil in the Universe exist because God set it up in such a way that it couldn't be otherwise". Which seems more like an admission that I'm right than a refutation? He could have designed the Universe any way He liked, no? He could have made a Universe in which suffering did not exist, or at the very least, one where there was far, far less of it than we see in this one. I could rattle off a list of the awful sh*t that exist here, but we both know that'd be tedious, you've probably heard it before. But unless you're going to go full Pangloss and claim that this is genuinely The Best of All Possible Worlds (ie, God literally could not have made it better), I don't think this is going to fly. The Universe has suffering because it needs to given the way God created it. But unless He had no other options besides creating it in this form, then that still means he's morally culpable for this setup. If I engineer a situation in which babies get killed, and could have done otherwise, then I am morally responsible for their deaths.
"This is by His design. From which we learn that death by natural causes, as such, is not a moral wrong."
How does this follow at all? Does the fact that something is God's Design automatically make it not evil? That sounds a lot like Divine Command Theory. Even if that's not quite correct, it's still begging the question. All of this seems to presume that God has a plan such that all the suffering and evil will be worth it in the end. But not only do we have no reason to think that's true (nor could you, given that you have no access to God's Mind and could not know His reasons even if they were there to be found), that also seems to suggest that God is doing evil that good may result. God creates mortals (without their consent) and throws them into a world filled with violence, cruelty, disease, injustice, etc (again without their consent), all supposedly for the purpose that they will conform to His will and receive eternal life and bliss in Heaven. And if your God were not omnipotent, you might be able to get away with this - if this were the only way in which such perfection could be achieved. But your God is supposed to be able to do anything, at least anything which is not logically contradictory. Could He not simply have created us in that perfect state? Why is the horrible Earthly state even necessary to begin with? If you really want this to work, you're going to have to show that it is at least plausible that there are no sufferings that are unnecessary. Surely the much more natural conclusion would be that the story *has* to include the Earthly stage, because it's the only one that's actually real, so the people who wrote about God and Heaven had to include it, despite the fact that it would make very little sense for Earth to exist in the form it does if God actually existed the way you say He does.
Actually, I have another way of putting this. Let me ask you a question: imagine for the sake of argument that God did not exist. What kind of world would you expect to exist in that case? I'd appreciate it if you could answer this question, it would help us to make some real progress, I think.
Anon,
DeleteYou're misreading us (well, misreading me, anyway). I'm not saying "the Bible doesn't condemn abortion explicitly, so abortion is OK". I'm well aware that that needs to be argued for separately. It's more like "the Bible doesn't condemn abortion explicitly. Isn't that weird? Why the heck not? How could an all-good God omit that? Did it just slip His mind? How can the Bible be inspired in that case?"
The real betrayal is by the Catholic hierarchy, which for decades has stayed chummy with pro-choice politicians and downplayed abortion in favor of immigration and the death penalty. The result is that most Catholics are now pro-choice and the culture in general has become more prochoice. Politics is downstream of culture; Trump and the Republicans are just reflecting where things are now. They are the effect, not the cause.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
DeleteLike a lot of conservatives, I was hopeful about a Vance vice-presidency. He has been deeply disappointing.
ReplyDeleteHe's really just another opportunistic politician willing to sacrifice principle [assuming he actually had any to begin with] for ambition.
You were a fool to think he would do anything. He compared Trump to Hitler in 2016. Nobody who honestly meant that could possibly consent to be his VP in 2024 in good conscience. So he had to have been lying at least one of those times - probably both. He's sold his soul, and I expect he won't even get anything for it. Donald Trump's Cult of Personality is the only thing holding MAGA together at this point, and barely. Vance absolutely does not have that mojo.
DeleteVance is also bought and paid for by Peter Thiel. He represents the interests of the transhumanist ruling class. His "Christianity" is empty LARPing.
DeleteAbsolutely. Screw Peter "the Reptile" Thiel. For my money, though, the weirdest thing about Peter Thiel is his bizarre, eclectic Christian(?) apocalypticism. That and his extreme lack of self-awareness, but that seems to be par for the course for the billionaire class. Seriously, have you heard him ramble about the Antichrist? He seems to really, truly believe it, albeit probably in a doctrinally heterodox form. What shocks me is that he can run a global surveillance company whose hands are soaked in innocent blood and then, incredibly, think that he's the good guy. He thinks Greta Thunberg (or someone like her) is the Antichrist. Yes, the powerless activist. Definitely gonna be her, and not the leader of a surveillance and technology empire that spans the world and wants to collect everyone's information. Seriously.
DeleteYou're not pessimistic enough. All the abortions, as you describe. Trump's "no forever wars" Forever Wars. The $40,000,000,000,000.00 and rising national debt. The AI crisis. China's rise. Europe's collapse. The Roman-style barbarian invasions there and here. Trump now is irrelevant. The GOP, too, is irrelevant, and will be wiped out on Nov. 3. Collapse ahead.
ReplyDeleteEurope is not being overcome by "barbarian invasions". Oh wait, I'm sorry, I forgot to source my news from OANN! Yeah, sure, there'll be a Franco-Belgian Islamo-Communist Satanic Gnostic Caliphate ruling the continent by 2030. Wow! Better get my People's Prayer Mat!
DeleteMassachusetts has always been a liberal Democratic state and abortion has always been legal there. But Kansas is a solidly red state, except when it comes to abortion. Although its Republican legislature has tried to outlaw abortion, the people of Kansas have continually voted to keep it legal.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article316869120.html
Wyoming is a solidly red state, but the people of Wyoming will not let the state take away their right to abortion.
https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/wyoming-supreme-court-strikes-down-laws-banning-abortion
"But that will be true only to the extent that pro-lifers make it clear that the GOP will pay a political price for betraying them." - and how are they supposed to do that?
ReplyDeleteCan they vote for the Democrats instead? No, definitely not. That is definitely worse.
Can they do something else that makes victory of Democrats more likely (for example, voting for some third party)? No, that also makes things worse. It could be an option if proportional representation was used, or if things were so desperate that symbolically voting for someone would not make things any worse, but that is not how things are in America nowadays.
Can they threaten to do those things, without doing them? That's both morally wrong and politically stupid. Making a threat and then demonstrating that it was empty is a good way to make others think that you should not be taken seriously. Even more so, if everyone can easily see that the threat is empty beforehand.
Can they do something during primary elections? But Trump is not going to be a candidate in any primary election any more.
Can they complain? Well, I remember that there already was a blog post complaining about this. Did it help?
Are there things that pro-lifers can actually do? Yes, there are, but they are not very spectacular. They can pray (conversion of Trump would be highly beneficial). They can argue for a more pro-life position (who knows who will be persuaded). They can be otherwise supportive of somewhat sympathetic politicians (that just might make them more willing to listen to pro-life positions).
Do they actually do any of this? Unfortunately, this blog post does not say anything about that.
As for the quote by C.S. Lewis, it seems to be an expression of the Aristotle's teaching that virtue is going to be found in the mean between two vices.
And it seems that here we have just an example.
That is, "hyper-partisanship" is clearly a vice (it would be when one sacrifices the most important principles for the tiniest political advantages, supports one's party no matter what). But then it follows that there is going to be "hypo-partisanship" (for example, ignoring what is politically possible, insisting on getting everything, and getting nothing, abandons one's party at the tiniest problem). The virtue would be between those two extremes.
And I'm afraid that this blog post expresses "hypo-partisanship", rather than the virtue in the mean.
(I suppose this triplet might be related to "prudence of the flesh", "imprudence" and "prudence".)
There is a good chance I am wrong, but the writing style seems to be reminiscent of Dr Michael Pakaluk as well as the initials.
DeleteCould MP confirm
Confirmed, Norm.
Delete@MP
DeleteCan they do something else that makes victory of Democrats more likely (for example, voting for some third party)? No, that also makes things worse. It could be an option if proportional representation was used, or if things were so desperate that symbolically voting for someone would not make things any worse, but that is not how things are in America nowadays."
On the long run is it worse? I mean as a serious question, to a outsider like me it seems like than getting rid of MAGA should be any serious right wing top priority.
@MP
DeleteCan they do something else that makes victory of Democrats more likely (for example, voting for some third party)? No, that also makes things worse. It could be an option if proportional representation was used, or if things were so desperate that symbolically voting for someone would not make things any worse, but that is not how things are in America nowadays."
On the long run is it worse? I mean as a serious question, to a outsider like me it seems like than getting rid of MAGA should be any serious right wing top priority.
The way that abortion is presented confuses the fundamental issue. At the most basic level, it is a choice of individuals, not a riddle for experts. Society recognizes (correctly) that it is bad to drive drunk and injure or kill someone and furthermore that individuals have the power to understand this and avoid the situation.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, abortion is treated as a riddle for the experts where individuals should just wait for the conclusion of the experts. But that is not actually so, individuals can choose to avoid having abortions or being in situations that might tempt them to do so. Some people may not, but it is not a valid principle of ethics that unless everyone else does something, then no one should do it.
People are able to choose to follow morality and that is a good thing. All of the rhetoric around abortion tries to obscure that. The individual choice is the most fundamental: if infanticide was legal but nobody did it, then that would be that.
Secondly, the way that abortion is argued for, opponents of abortion have to consider every little disagreement that someone somewhere has, every hypothetical situation, every thought experiment and until these are dealt with and not just dealt with, but dealt with definitively so that everyone agrees then have been dealt with, then and only then will people be justified in opposing abortion.
And yet, if everyone was as philosophical and self-controlled as all that, abortion wouldn't even be a major issue. And in the meantime, while opponents of abortion are supposed to be living in an imaginary philosophers paradise, where everything is put on hold until an issue is definitively settled, proponents of abortion are out there propagandizing for it under all circumstances, not all those hypothetical thought experiments they claim to love so much.
The point is that the basic framing leads to confusion. You can argue back and forth about a philosophical issue all day but at the end you have to choose what to do and choosing the better is better, that is what people should follow.
NLR, you seem to be arguing (roughly) that the pro-life side is proceeding in an ineffective manner by arguing as if they are required to win every jot and tittle of possible disputed issues before they may insist on laws outlawing abortion. At least, that's the sense I got.
DeleteI don't see it. First, many pro-lifers don't bother arguing, they do things like (a) pray, (b) offer alternatives, (c) live and breathe and speak pro-life in their behavior: these sometimes persuade women WITHOUT argument. I have seen it happen. Second, like the abolition movement, the pro-life movement may take a long, long time before the social conscience is moved sufficiently to be enshrined in law. Lack of legal success in the meantime doesn't equal lack of effect. Thirdly, you are right that many times pro-abortionists have used better strategy than pro-lifers, and have outmaneuvered them by smarter tactics. Pro-lifers should learn from their mistakes. Fourthly, while pro-lifers don't rely solely on argument, they have not really been successful in large scale efforts to use other media approaches, and this is a flaw in their efforts. But none of this remotely implies that the pro-lifers understand their own stance as being "we must successfully counter-argue every possible pro-abortion argument before we can attempt pro-life laws", and if pro-abortionists are attempting to foist that silly position on the other side, it should be shrugged off as mere straw-manning.
"NLR, you seem to be arguing (roughly) that the pro-life side is proceeding in an ineffective manner by arguing as if they are required to win every jot and tittle of possible disputed issues before they may insist on laws outlawing abortion. At least, that's the sense I got"
DeleteI apologize for my lack of clarity, I was not claiming that the pro-life side thinks this, my point was that when the issue of abortion is considered as a moral issue, from an impartial position (that is, it is believed by the people considering it that they are doing so in an impartial way), two things which confuse people's thinking are often tacitly assumed:
1. Abortion is a riddle for the experts rather than an issue that individuals can understand and act upon by themselves.
and
2. That arguments (I just mean reasons in general, not academic philosophy, though it could include that) against abortion cannot be considered successful unless it is agreed by everyone that these arguments defeat every objection. But this is assuming a totally self-controlled and philosophical society that does not exist.
I have no disagreements with your second paragraph.
An issue that is apparent at the present time is that often, when societal or moral issues are discussed, the framing of the issue biases any discussion before it even starts and it is good to clear the ground and clarify things ahead of time. But I should have added further explanation that this was the motivation for my comment.
Trump was a life-long Democrat until quite recently, i.e. basically through his middle age. He isn't likely to have become truly pro-life when he ran for the Republican ticket, and pro-lifers should never have trusted him on the issue. I didn't. He may have became a wee bit more willing to give the pro-life cause a bit of a boost after switching parties (read: both parties moved leftward while he mainly held still), e.g. he was prepared to let the states have more say, without taking any form of a principled position against abortion as such. His behavior was more readily read to be that he didn't think abortion should have a national mandate (like in Roe), but beyond that he didn't care much, and he was willing to throw bones to the pro-life side for political purposes without making it his life's mission.
ReplyDeleteWhat irks me more in Trump's "change" on abortion is the business of IVF during his 2nd term, making it a positive goal: there's no political need to do so (the actual numbers of those getting IVF done is quite small, (like 2%), and there's no good basis for any call for government to fund it, even if you don't forbid it. Trump's position on this is a repudiation of MANY Republican principles, and pointless politically to boot, he's adding insult to injury. Stupid on top of wrong. But Trump's ideas on issues like this have wandered all over the map, because (as far as I can tell) his understanding of moral principle is about as sophisticated as comic books meant for 10 year olds. Dull 10 year olds, at that.
As for Vance, his bishop needs to read him the riot act. But will he? Well, how often did Biden's bishop warn him that publicly supporting abortion is a mortal sin and exclude him from Communion?
While it is broadly true that the American people on average want abortion available and want IVF available, there's actually quite a bit of room for nuanced compromise in there. For example, most people are very uncomfortable with abortions purely for sex selection, and many people are extremely uncomfortable with very-late-term abortions. As currently constituted, no Democrat will lobby for laws imposing limits reflecting this, but a Republican could well hold a large majority on this isolated issue.
The moderator of this blog has tweeted that late term and early term abortions are murder. We execute or sentence to life imprisonment those who commit murder. Why don't we do the same to women who abort their babies?
ReplyDeleteThe ongoing debate over abortion will never be resolved in this lifetime. What we can know is how happy and proud people are with their position on it. That pride will either further condemn you or elevate you in the eyes of God.
ReplyDeleteSeeing how bad the right became here and how sadly these parasites attached themselves onto Christianity i fear for my country future.
ReplyDeleteWe do have our problems with these for years, even had a president back them, and they are becoming more and more popular on politics. Likely they will not have the presidency this year, but other positions are already full of these and who knows the future. Things are so bad than even the party than pretty much flopped for nearly 20 years seems better, but so is life in Latin America, i guess.
The espiritual effects seems as bad as the political ones. A lot of people tends to unite these and Christianity*, so to a lot of people either you sacrifice a lot of the faith to become a defender of these or you say farewell to the faith and to they. It is not good at all.
*seems more of a thing with evangelicals yet
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ReplyDeleteAnd hey, while I'm here pointing out awkward contradictions, why don't we consider this little ditty: Exodus 22, 29-30:
"29 “You shall not delay to make offerings from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses.[c] “The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. 30 You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me."
Catch that? "The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me". As in, *sacrifice* them to me. And we can be confident that this is the intended meaning because sacrificing the firstborn lambs and calves was normal practice, and the sentence connects the two things so tightly that it doesn't even bother repeating the verb when mentioning sheep and oxen. The grammar leaves no doubt that *the same thing* is supposed to happen to the lambs, calves, and human babies.
Sure, you've got circumlocutions in other passages that attempt to negate this command without formally contradicting it, whether it be saying that you should redeem/buy back the child on the way to sacrifice it, or Numbers attempting to claim "oh, it just means to dedicate the child to priestly service". But all these attempts are deeply problematic - firstly, most scholars agree that the Covenant Code (Exodus 20:22–23:19) is one of the oldest parts of the Bible, thus all the other passages are very likely later attempts to smooth over the problem. The Numbers example still clearly understands the original command to have been to sacrifice children, as it adds a layer claiming that the Levites will now act as "substitutes" for what God is owed...which still implies that God is owed your firstborn children. The "buy it back" solutions in Exodus suffer from the obvious problem that...well...if that's true, then God has done a spectacularly bad job at communicating to His people. If you wanted people to not sacrifice their children, saying "sacrifice your kids to me...psyche! Actually turn away and pay me money instead on the way" is about the worst way you could possibly do it. Why not just say..."don't sacrifice your children"? That makes no sense except as an attempt to get around a command to child sacrifice that couldn't simply be thrown out because it was too old and important.
Furthermore, anytime someone else in the Bible speaks of this command, they understand it to have been a command to sacrifice the firstborn. Quoth Ezekiel 20:23-26:
"Also with uplifted hand I swore to them in the wilderness that I would disperse them among the nations and scatter them through the countries, 24 because they had not obeyed my laws but had rejected my decrees and desecrated my Sabbaths, and their eyes lusted after their parents’ idols. 25 So I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live; 26 I defiled them through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn—that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord"
Here, Ezekiel has God claim that He did in fact give these commandment, as a punishment for Israel's rebellion, in order to show them who was boss. But He *does* admit to having made such orders.
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ReplyDeleteJeremiah, on the other hand, instead has God repeatedly deny that He ever gave any such command concerning sacrifice or burnt offering when He brought Israel out of Egypt...despite Exodus 22 claiming the opposite.
(Jer 7:22-24) (NRSVUE)
"22 For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.” 24 Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels and looked backward rather than forward."
Notably, some more dogmatic translations, like the NIV, actually alter the text of verse 22 to say "I did not ONLY speak to them about burnt offerings...", which is straight-up mistranslation. That is not a valid translation of the Hebrew original, it's an outright addition in order to harmonize the text with Exodus.
Later, he says (Jer 7:31)
"31 And they go on building the high place[e] of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind."
"They sacrificed their children - which I didn't command! No, it didn't even cross my mind!". Kind of an odd thing to say, nobody was accusing you, right?
(Jer 19:4-5)
"4 Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent 5 and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind"
Again, "I never said that! I did not, I never said that!"
And again (Jer 32:35)
" 35 They built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination, causing Judah to sin."
"I swear, I never said to do that!"
The deity doth protest too much, methinks.